Encouraging curiosity in the future generation

What inspired me to write this article is an encounter I had with a young mother recently which stuck to my memory… and I just needed to share my thoughts about how things done innocently can actually have far reaching effects on our future generation.  I had travelled to Abuja and was invited to spend […]

What inspired me to write this article is an encounter I had with a young mother recently which stuck to my memory… and I just needed to share my thoughts about how things done innocently can actually have far reaching effects on our future generation.
 I had travelled to Abuja and was invited to spend the day with a friend. She had a son that was quite inquisitive, and I was frankly impressed by the nature of questions he asked about things around him – bill boards, pictures we passed by, etc. He even asked if I knew whether the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, still wears suits.
 However, contrary to my own amused and impressed reaction, his mother was just annoyed by the ‘nagging’ questions, not because she thought they were entirely meaningless, but because ‘she needed a break from his badgering’ which were a ‘nuisance’, and because ‘he was too talkative’ and needed some discipline so that he does not ‘become a chatterbox’.
 He was scolded and ordered to ‘shut up’, and when he forgot after some while, she ordered him to go to a corner, sit down and hold his lips together- that was a punishment he hated – she informed me. Now, I do know that kids may have the tendency to become talkative or nosy adults or even gossips, etc, when not cautioned about the right language, politeness, decorum, etc.
 But one should not do that by killing the curiosity in them and dampening their confidence to ask questions and be inquisitive about the things around them; thus inadvertently making them unsure, uncertain and un-inquisitive.
 My thoughts on the whole scenario was ‘what a way to suppress his curiosity!’ and I frankly shared my view with her. She sighed and told me that I was just saying it because I was not the one being disturbed. Now to be fair to the young mother, I can’t entirely blame her. After a tedious day at work, all you want is some peace and quiet, and perhaps some time to chat with old friends and catch up on old times, or watch a movie without disturbance, or whatever way of relaxation from the stress of work.
 But the consequence and impact of what we do in reaction to some healthy innocent curiosity is sometimes lost on us until it is quite late. A child’s thought pattern is disrupted, his intellectual development could be seriously hampered as (s)he accepts what (s)he sees without questioning how it is, and how it came to be or what things revolve around the existence of those things.
 It hinders creativity, dampens a child’s spirit, suppresses his/her confidence and in the end, could harm our future generation.
I realized that what the young mother did was typical of many homes, where parents would chastise or even punish a child for being inquisitive, especially when they do not have a ready answer for the child’s curious mind, or when they felt that the question was culturally off course…there could be lots of reasons for brushing off the child’s curious questions. Typically, the response could be either to brush off the question as irrelevant and therefore not deserving of an answer, or to tell the child to shut up and not to talk too much or to scold the child for asking too many questions, or to punish the child if (s)he disobeyed that instruction.
And so I wondered… could that be the reason for the problem of our youth not being so innovative and inquisitive anymore?
 Is it because their curiosity was suppressed at an early age and the discipline of conforming to their parents’ expectations instilled? 
The first few years of a child’s life are the most important – his learning years. Curiosity at the early stages of growing is mostly a natural part of their learning processes, as rightly stated by Smiley Blanton, “A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.”
 It needs to be encouraged, by motivating the child to be aware of his/her environment, explore things, ask questions, and be generally inquisitive. So, Arnold Edinborough in an amusing way of countering the saying that curiosity killed the cat, stated “Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.”
 Charles Proteus agrees that to stop asking questions is more foolish than asking questions, in his words, “There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”
 How a person is raised to challenge, question and discover things around him/her develops and widens his/her scope and perspective and helps build a solid foundation for an enlightened society.
 Curiosity has built dynasties and civilizations before us, it has also engraved people’s names in history through centuries. Albert Einstein, the father of the Atomic Bomb, explained the key to his successes “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious”, he also added “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
 He was a person who inquired and probed and delved until he found answers to satisfy his curiosity, then made groundbreaking discoveries and became renowned for them.
 However,  it is worth mentioning that although healthy curiosity is generally good, some form of curiosity can actually be useless or sometimes harmful, especially when not targeted towards ideas, or information that inspires one’s thinking or creativity.
 Thus, curiosity about people and their mundane affairs could be just merely ‘nosy’. The advice, as put by  Marie Curie is to be ‘less curious about people and more curious about ideas’.
 You can help develop a healthy curiosity in children by exposing them to different environments, giving them variety of things to mull over and think about, taking them places, buying them books, games, toys (such as bricks, jigsaw puzzles, etc).
 Encourage them to be observant, and to explore possibilities, but direct their interests towards useful knowledge, information or ideas. You should also encourage them to READ good solid books that suit their ages -and give them variety. But more importantly, be there for them, support their interests and encourage their inquisitive instincts.
 So when next a child asks you a curious question, do remember that ‘the future belongs to the curious..’ and we all have a civic duty to build the curiosity in our future generation.
Safiya A.N. is a lecturer, Department of International Law and Jurisprudence, Bayero University, Kano
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